Antigone Journal 3

In Antigone, I found it interesting how Anouilh contrasts life and death.  In Antigone's argument with Creon, Anouilh uses Antigone to represent death and uses Creon to represent life.  Even though Creon wanted to give Antigone a chance at keeping her life, Antigone persisted on Creon doing his duty to arrest her and have her put to death.  This conflict of interest creates tension not only between Antigone and Creon, but also between Antigone and Ismene at the beginning of the play.  Ismene tries to persuade Antigone to not bury Polynices, and Antigone refuses. Antigone is also faced with the conflict within herself, that if she buries Polynices, his death will be justified, but in turn, she would be killed if she followed her emotions and granted Polynices a peaceful eternal rest.  The conflicting between ideas of life and death correlate with the conflict of happiness vs. misery, or unhappiness.  Creon firmly believes that choosing life would result in happiness for Antigone, but she explains that choosing life, and not being able to bury Polynices would result in her life being pointless or unfulfilled.  Antigone didn't believe that happiness would ever be fully reached, whether she didn't bury Polynices and ended up living, or whether she died, in which case she would not be able to show emotion and be happy.